PROFESSIONAL PAPERS.No. 5 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY 
BY MEMBERS OF THE STAFF OF 
ARTHUR D. JLITTLE, Inc., CHEMISTS & ENGINEERS 


THE EARNING POWER 
OF CHEMISTRY 

BY 

ARTHUR D. LITTLE 


A PUBLIC LECTURE TO BUSINESS MEN DELIVERED UNDER THE 
AUSPICES OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 
AT INDIANAPOLIS, JUNE 29. 1911 





93 BROAD STREET 
BOSTON 
1911 


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HE WORK OF THIS LABORATORY 



of Engineering Chemistry is primarily 
directed toward increasing the efficiency of 


Industrial Effort by aiding manufacturers, public 
service corporations and individual clients in the 
economic selection of raw materials, the chemical 
control of processes and product and the study of 
special problems. 

The Laboratory organization, which is the 
most complete in the country in its field, includes 
specialists in mechanical, fuel, turbine, gas and 
electrical engineering, and in all departments of 
applied chemistry, who have been selected equally 
with reference to their initial scientific training and 
wide practical experience. 

Correspondence regarding the service of this 
Laboratory as applied to any particular problem, 
plant or industry is invited and will receive prompt 
attention. 


ARTHUR D. LITTLE, Inc. 


93 Broad St., 

Boston, Mass. 



The Earning Power 
of Chemistry 1 

By ARTHUR D. LITTLE 

TT may fairly be claimed for chemistry that it is at once 
the most fundamental and the most comprehensive of 
all the sciences. Its province, in the classical definition 
of Ostwald, is “ The study of the different forms of mat¬ 
ter, their properties, and the changes which they undergo.” 
Thus defined, chemistry embraces the material universe, our 
solar system, the most distant stars and the flaming nebulae 
no less than the dust speck within the universe, on which we 
live and which we call the earth. It includes within its 
subject matter the physical basis of our own bodies and 
of those of every living thing upon the earth. It is directly 
concerned with the air we breathe, the water we drink, the 
food we eat, the materials upon which we expend our labor, 
and the things which we buy and sell. 

To me has been assigned the pleasant task of bringing 
home to you some conception of the extent to which you are 
already indebted to this science and a better appreciation of 
the comprehensive benefits which it still holds out to you. 

The world in which we live is a different world to every 
individual in it, as it has been a different world to every 
generation of the race of men. To no other generation 
have its confines been so opened out and broadened as to our 
own. To the man congenitally blind, tapping his way along 
the curb, a modern city is a place of sounds and measured 
spaces; to one who sees, it becomes a world of light and 
movement and ever-changing shades. Plymouth Rock is a 
very ordinary piece of granite to one who knows not its 


1 Reprinted from the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 
Vol. 3 , No. 8 . August, 1911 . 



history; to the better informed it stands as the symbol of 
that adventurous spirit and uncompromising virtue on which 
the foundations of our country rest. To the world at large 
coal-tar is a black and evil-smelling nuisance; to the eye of 
the chemist it is replete with all the potentialities of the 
rainbow. 

So it happens that the world as viewed by the chemist 
presents an aspect different in many ways from that in which 
it appears to the mind not chemically trained. As the as¬ 
tronomer perceives in the movements of the stars a rela¬ 
tionship and coordination to which the average man is 
blind, and deduces from them generalizations by which both 
the intellectual and practical life of the community are pro¬ 
foundly influenced, so the chemist, who may be regarded as 
the astronomer of the infinitely minute, studies the move¬ 
ments and interchange of atoms and the structure of the 
molecular systems which result therefrom. In other words, 
the astronomer interprets the universe in terms of certain 
units, which are the heavenly bodies, while the chemist seeks 
his interpretation in terms of the ultimate particles of 
which matter is composed, whether they be molecules, atoms, 
ions or electrons. And, since the different forms of mat¬ 
ter, in their flux and flow, together constitute the universe, 
the properties of matter and the changes which these prop¬ 
erties undergo are of compelling interest and importance to 
each one of us in every activity of our lives. 

We live immersed in an ocean of air and we draw this 
air into our lungs approximately eighteen times a minute. 
The quality of this air, its temperature, pressure, humidity, 
the minute impurities which may be present, affect our com¬ 
fort and well-being in many ways. It supports the chemi¬ 
cal processes of combustion by which our existence is main¬ 
tained no less than those upon which we are chiefly depen¬ 
dent for light and heat and power. The nature of this all- 
enveloping atmosphere of air has always been a subject of 
speculation, though to little purpose before the advent of 
chemistry. 

Modern chemistry had its birth in the eighteenth century 
study of the air and its relation to the processes of respira¬ 
tion and combustion. Professor Ramsay has said that “ To 

2 

Fubliotea? 


ATI 29 191? 


tell the story of the development of men’s ideas regarding 
the nature of atmospheric air is in great part to write a his¬ 
tory of chemistry and physics.” The story is one which 
has reached its culminating interest in our own most recent 
times. For $35 you may now buy apparatus for reducing 
air to the liquid form and study the properties of matter at 
temperatures nearly as low as that of interstellar space. 

Within the memory of the youngest undergraduate in 
chemistry the brilliant researches of Ramsay, Raleigh and 
other chemists have disclosed the presence in the air we 
breathe of five new gases of remarkable and in some respects 
unique properties. To one of these, neon, we now con¬ 
fidently attribute the long mysterious phenomena of the 
aurora borealis. Tubes containing highly rarefied neon may 
become as commonplace to our descendants as candles were 
to our forefathers. They glow with a rich, mellow, golden 
light on the passage through them of an electrical discharge. 

The heavy toll of life in mine disasters would be unsup- 
portably heavier were it not for the Davy lamp, the fire¬ 
damp indicators, the rescue outfits and the regulation of 
explosives, all of which have become possible only through 
the growth of chemical knowledge. Ventilating systems as 
applied to theaters, halls and dwellings are based on chemi¬ 
cal studies of the rates and causes of increase in the car¬ 
bonic acid content in the air of rooms. The proportion of 
sulphur permissible by law in illuminating gas finds its justi¬ 
fication in similar studies on the air in rooms in which such 
sulphur-bearing gas is burned. 

The chemical and biological study of public water sup¬ 
plies, which received its first systematic development little 
more than twenty years ago at the hands of Drown and 
Mrs. Richards in the laboratories of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, has been the means of saving count¬ 
less lives throughout the world and has led to such under¬ 
standing and made possible such control of sources of pollu¬ 
tion as to almost justify the statement that for every case 
of typhoid fever some one should be hanged. Chemistry 
can now determine in advance of use the suitability of a 
given water supply for use in boilers or for the requirements 
of any special line of industry, as paper-making, dyeing, 

3 


cloth finishing, brewing and so on. Furthermore it sup¬ 
plies the means for correcting undesirable characteristics in 
a water supply as by use of filtration apparatus, coagulants, 
w r ater-softening systems and the Moore method for the de¬ 
struction of the algae which in many waters are the cause 
of unpleasant tastes and odors. 

Nowhere is the practical value of chemistry in its re¬ 
lation to the affairs of every-day life more strikingly demon¬ 
strated than in connection with our food supply. Chemical 
fertilizers are in large and constantly increasing measure 
responsible for the enormous total of our agricultural prod¬ 
ucts. The whole fertilizer business is under the strictest 
chemical control, and the farmer buys his fertilizer on the 
basis of a knowledge of its composition and effective value 
which puts the average purchasing agent of a manufacturing 
company or public service corporation to shame. The Asso¬ 
ciation of Official Agricultural Chemists, and the labora¬ 
tories of the agricultural colleges and experiment stations 
throughout the country are doing more to keep down the 
cost of living than all the lawmakers we send to state capitols 
and Washington. 

One of the most insistent of the demands of growing 
plants is that for nitrogen in form available for plant food. 
A small proportion of the necessary supply of nitrogen in 
the assimilative form is derived from the manure of farm 
animals and from animal wastes of various kinds, but for 
many years the world has depended upon the nitrate beds 
of Chili as the chief source of this indispensable element of 
plant growth. It is bad enough to be tied in this way to a 
single far-away deposit, but the situation becomes alarming 
when we discover that this deposit can hardly meet the 
world’s demand for nitrate for another twenty years. One 
may contemplate the Malthusian theory with indifference 
or even with disbelief, but here is a condition not to be gain- 
sa id. The world must do something to meet it within twenty 
years or the world must make up its mind to starve. For¬ 
tunately for the world the chemists are already doing some¬ 
thing. They have recognized that 33,800 tons of nitrogen 
are pressing down upon every acre of land and have boldly 
attacked the problem of rendering available such portion 


of this inexhaustible supply as the world may need. The 
methods employed have been daring and brilliant in the 
extreme. 

In 1785 Cavendish in a paper before the Royal Society 
describes the production of nitric acid by the passage of an 
electric spark through air. A hundred years later Brad¬ 
ley and Lovejoy at Niagara balls, by drawing air through an 
apparatus by which 400,000 arcs were made and broken 
each minute, demonstrated the possibility of the commercial 
manufacture of nitrates from atmospheric air. Birkeland 
and Eyde in Norway pass the air through furnaces in which 
it comes in contact with enormous flaming and rotating arcs. 
Rossi in Italy brings the air in contact with highly incandes¬ 
cent material of special composition. Although by these sev¬ 
eral processes nitrate has been produced by thousands of tons 
it is doubtful if the artificial product can yet compete with 
Chili niter. Even now, however, the margin is not a wide 
one and the results already accomplished amply prove that 
when our agriculture begins to feel the pinch of a failing 
nitrate supply the chemist may safely be relied on to meet 
the situation. This assurance is rendered doubly sure by 
the fact that a solution of the problem along altogether 
different lines is already nearly or quite within our hands. 
Dr. Frank has shown that by heating calcium carbide, itself 
a comparatively recent product of the laboratory, in a 
stream of nitrogen there is formed a new compound, cal¬ 
cium cyanamide. The practical interest in this compound 
depends upon the fact that when exposed to a current of 
steam it decomposes into ammonia and carbonate of lime 
and that the same reaction takes place slowly in the soil 
when the cyanamide is mixed therewith. Since the nitro¬ 
gen in ammonia is directly assimilable by plants and since 
calcium carbide requires for its production only lime and 
coke and power we may view without serious concern the 
approaching failure of the Chilian nitrate beds. 

But it is not only on the side of agriculture that chemis¬ 
try touches our food supply. Chemistry pervades the pack¬ 
ing industry, reducing the cost of food by utilization of 
by-products of the most varied character from oleomarga¬ 
rine to glycerine and soap and from soap to pepsin and 


5 


adrenalin. To Atwater and his coworkers we owe our 
knowledge of the energy-producing value of different foods 
in the human economy, and to Wiley and those other chem¬ 
ists behind him on the firing line we are indebted for the 
far-reaching benefits of the Pure Food Law. 

Carbon disulphid made in the Taylor electric furnace 
has preserved the wine industry of France by destroying 
the phylloxera as it is ridding our own fields of prairie dogs 
and our elevators of rats and mice. Bread-making and 
brewing are coming each year more and more within the 
recognized domain of chemistry, which is at the same time 
greatly enhancing the value of our staple crop by the in¬ 
creasing production of glucose, corn oil and gluten. Ex¬ 
actly one hundred years ago Kirchhof discovered the in¬ 
version of starch to glucose by dilute acids. To-day the 
United States alone is richer by $30,000,000 a year by rea¬ 
son of that discovery. 

The relation of chemistry to the clothes we wear is 
perhaps less obvious but still of the first importance. More 
land is planted to cotton and cotton itself is cheaper be¬ 
cause chemistry has taught the planter how to secure in¬ 
creased yields by proper fertilization and how to obtain 
increased profits by utilization of the cottonseed for oil and 
cattle feed. Chemistry is even now developing new sources 
of profit for the planter by adapting the short fiber adher¬ 
ing to the ginned cottonseed hull to the making of smokeless 
powder and the stalks of the cotton plant to paper-making. 

The woolen industries are dependent upon chemistry 
for the processes of separating the pure fiber from the 
grease and dirt with which it is associated in the raw wool 
and for the methods of working up this wool waste into 
oleic acid, soap, lubricating oils and potash and ammonia 
salts, as well as for the process of carbonizing by which 
the wool is separated from the burrs and other vegetable 
material with which it is admixed in the fleece. 

Many of the most brilliant achievements of chemis¬ 
try have been directly concerned with the textile industries. 
A little touch of chemistry to cotton yarns and fabrics in 
the mercerizing process gave the world what is practically a 
new textile fiber — cotton with the beauty and luster of 

6 


silk. A history of absorbing interest replete with struggle, 
the capture of positions of temporary advantage, the con¬ 
stant shifting of the fighting line, crushing defeats and 
signal victories might be written of the development of 
the bleach and alkali industry, upon the products of which 
the textile manufacturer depends for the finishing of his 
goods. We see the pathetic figure of Le Blanc dying in the 
poorhouse after enriching the world which Napoleon was 
devastating. No less interesting in its human and scientific 
aspects is the long story of the coal-tar colors in which 
chemists take so large a measure of justifiable pride. An in¬ 
vestment of $750,000,000 follows Perkin’s discovery of 
mauve. 

Less notable, but nevertheless an industrial achievement 
of the highest order is the very modern development of 
artificial silk which, though made from wood pulp, far 
surpasses in brilliance and beauty the finest products of 
China and Japan. Closely related thereto, is the artificial 
horsehair of which so large a proportion of women’s hats 
are made and the still more recent artificial bristles of cel¬ 
lulose acetate with which you may have brushed your hair 
this morning. 

A complex series of chemical reactions has its origin 
in the striking of every match, and civilization as we know 
it could hardly exist without the modern facilities for se¬ 
curing artificial light. For the extraordinary extension of 
these facilities during the past century the chemist has 
mainly been responsible. The immortal Faraday selected 
“ The Chemistry of a Candle ” as the subject matter of 
a classical series of lectures to audiences of children. From 
the rush candle and the tallow dip to the candles of stearin 
and paraffin is in itself a long journey, the milestones on 
which were set by Scheele, Chevreul, Heintz and Tilghman. 

The refining of petroleum involved the solution of 
many difficult chemical problems. The Chicago fire is said 
to have been started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow which kicked 
over a kerosene lamp. In those days, however, it was not 
necessary to invoke the cow to start a conflagration with 
kerosene. Much of the lighting oil upon the market at 
that time would flash below ioo° F. We owe our present 


7 


safety in the use of kerosene largely to the work of Pro¬ 
fessor Chandler. 

The production of illuminating gas is wholly a chemi¬ 
cal process. When coal gas was first employed for light¬ 
ing the Houses of Parliament the members might be seen 
gingerly touching the pipes to discover if they were not 
indeed hot from carrying such flame. That gas is now so 
cheap is due in large part to the development by Lowe of 
the chemical process for making water gas by passing 
steam through a bed of glowing coals and to the chemical 
processes for gas enrichment. By the Blaugas system il¬ 
luminating gas is now produced in liquid form and dis¬ 
tributed in steel bottles to isolated consumers like so much 
kerosene. 

The gas mantle by which the illuminating power of gas 
is raised from 16 to 60 candles on a consumption of 3^2 
feet an hour constitutes one of the most signal triumphs of 
chemical research. Certain sands found in Brazil and 
known as monazite sands had long been a happy hunting 
ground for chemists by reason of the number of rare me¬ 
tallic elements to be found therein. They seemed to be a 
sort of chemical garret where everything not otherwise 
used up during the process of creation had been stowed. 
Dr. Carl von Welsbach was investigating the rare elements 
in these sands some thirty years ago and studying their 
spectra. It occurred to him that a better flame for his pur¬ 
pose or rather a better distribution of the metallic vapor 
in the ordinary Bunsen flame might be secured by distribu¬ 
ting the metallic compound through the substance of a bit 
of cambric. He dipped the cambric in a solution of the 
salts, suspended it in the flame, burned off the cotton, and 
found that the fragile ash glowed with an amazing bril¬ 
liance. So came into being the gas mantle which has revolu¬ 
tionized and saved the illuminating gas industry, though 
not until the initial discovery had been followed by years of 
the most painstaking and refined research. 

In the development of electric lighting the chemist has 
played a part scarcely less important than that of the 
electrician. 

The arc light was first shown by Davy between char- 

8 


coal points and was maintained by the current developed 
by the action of chemicals in the enormous battery of the 
Royal Institution. To Faraday, whose achievements in 
electricity have overshadowed his renown as a chemist, 
we owe the discoveries upon which our modern methods 
of generating electricity are based. The early history of 
the incandescent lamp is a chronicle in equal measure of 
the difficulties of finding a proper material for the fila¬ 
ment and those of producing the requisite degree of vacuum 
in the bulb. Both problems were solved by chemistry which 
first supplied the carbon filament made by dissolving cel¬ 
lulose, squirting the solution into a thread of the required 
diameter, drying and carbonizing the thread and there¬ 
after flashing in an atmosphere of hydrocarbon vapor to 
deposit carbon on the filament precisely where and in ex¬ 
actly what proportion its original inequalities of resistance 
to the current made necessary. More recently Whitney 
and other chemists working in the same field first greatly 
raised the efficiency of the filament by the process of met¬ 
allizing, so-called, and have since given us lamps of an 
altogether new order of usefulness by employing new ma¬ 
terials, as tungsten, for the filament. 

The second great problem, that of securing rapidly and 
cheaply the necessary high vacuum in the bulb, was solved 
in the most elegant manner by the extraordinary Malignani 
process. Malignani placed within the tubulature leading 
from the bulb and connecting the bulb and pump, a minute 
quantity of red phosphorus, started the pump and roughly 
exhausted to about 2 mm. of mercury. He then sent 
through the filament a current so heavy as to bring the fila¬ 
ment to intensive incandescence and cause the gaseous resi¬ 
due within the bulb to faintly glow so that the bulb was 
filled with a luminous blue haze. He then sealed off the 
pump by fusion of the walls of the tubulature below the 
phosphorus and with the bulb still glowing touched the tip 
of the blowpipe flame to that portion of the tubulature wall 
against which the phosphorus rested. With the vaporiza¬ 
tion of the phosphorus the blue haze instantaneously dis¬ 
appeared and an almost perfect vacuum was secured within 
the bulb. The process is not one of oxygen combustion as 


9 


might on first thought appear and its ultimate mechanism 
was not understood until many years subsequent to its 
discovery. 

The improvements in incandescent lamps in the last ten 
years have resulted in the saving of $24,000,000 a year in 
the cost of lighting as compared with the cost of equal 
illumination by the older types of lamp. 

To the art of illumination Wohler and Willson have 
contributed the calcium carbide and acetylene found on 
every automobile and in a hundred thousand isolated 
homes; Pintsch and Blau have developed separate systems 
permitting the transport of illuminating gases in steel tanks 
for the lighting of trains and houses; to Hewitt we owe the 
mercury lamp, to other inventors the flaming arc, to Nernst 
the high efficiency lamp which has his name, and, long be¬ 
fore them all, to Bunsen the blue flame burner utilized by 
Welsbach and which constitutes the basic element in every 
gas stove. 

I have endeavored in this cursory and most inadequate 
survey to indicate something of the extent to which chem¬ 
istry contributes to the satisfaction of the demands and 
needs of every-day life. The earning power of the science 
becomes more directly apparent in its relation to general 
industry. 

American manufacturing is in many respects the most 
intensive in the world. Nowhere is plant scrapped so 
quickly to be replaced by larger, faster and more efficient 
machines. Nowhere else is labor so speeded up by piece 
work, bonuses, motion studies, gang organization and the 
other devices of the efficiency engineer. In no country can 
new office systems, typewriters, adding machines, time re¬ 
corders, memory ticklers, duplicating devices and all the par¬ 
aphernalia of the follow-up be sold as quickly and in none 
are they utilized so thoroughly. Our manufacturers un¬ 
derstand these things, and what they understand they want, 
and are quick to make the most of, provided always they 
can use it in their business. They do not understand chem¬ 
istry, naturally they do not propose to have any chemist 
teach them their business. This is reflected in the attitude 
of their subordinates which is commonly one of militant 


10 


skepticism. They, like their masters, cut themselves off 
from that great coordinated and organized body of knowl¬ 
edge brought together by thousands of highly trained minds 
through the incessant questioning of nature during a hun¬ 
dred years. They pay less regard to many of the laws of 
nature than they do to city ordinances. When under these 
circumstances they fail to make a satisfactory profit in 
competition with more enlightened Germany, they jack up 
the tariff. They ignore applied chemistry which offers them 
better protection than the highest schedules of the Aldrich 

bill. 

Let us consider a few concrete examples of the earn¬ 
ing power of chemistry. A large pulp mill found itself 
with over 100,000 cords of peeled wood piled in its yard 
and this wood was beginning to rot. A few thousand gal¬ 
lons of sulphite liquor sprayed over the pile from a gar¬ 
den hose killed the fungus and saved the pile. The same 
mill v/as losing 23 per cent, of its wood as barker waste. 
Laboratory trials proved that an excellent quality of paper 
could be made from this waste, all of which in this mill is 
now profitably worked up. Other mills still throw 20 per 
cent, or more of their initial raw material away. The mill 
was cooking in 16 hours. Laboratory cooks were made in 
t ] 1 / 2 hours and the time of the mill cook reduced to 10. 
Finally, by a proper spacing of the digesters, the produc¬ 
tion of the plant was brought from 97 tons a day to 149 
tons. 

Cylinder oils generally cost about what you are accus¬ 
tomed to pay. Plants which employ a chemist pay from 
19 to 27 cents. Manufacturers who do not need a chemist 
commonly pay 45 cents, 65 cents or even, if they know 
their own business very well, $1.50 a gallon. There is 
probably not a large plant in the country in which, if it is 
not already under chemical control, the lubrication account 
cannot be cut in two. In the engine room of one large ce¬ 
ment plant the average monthly cost for lubricants had 
been $337. It is now $30. A concern paying 37 cents a 
pound for a special grease which the superintendent needed 
to run the mill now buys on specification for 5^ and the 


mill still runs. Another company within our knowledge 
saves $12,000 a year on cutting oils alone. 

In a plant near Boston using two tons a week of special 
steel rolled very thin, their chemist was able in about two 
years to reduce the cost of the material from 80 to 40 cents 
a pound while at the same time standardizing and greatly 
improving the quality of the steel. We recall savings of 
$2,100 a year on wrapping paper, $3,600 on boiler com¬ 
pounds, $6,800 on a minor article of supply, $100,000 a 
year on a single raw material. Professor Duncan, in his 
fascinating and suggestive book, “The Chemistry of Com¬ 
merce,” says: “ On three separate occasions the writer has 
visited the same glass house to see the workmen bailing out 
a lake of violet spoiled glass from the same immense tank, 
and all because it was deemed by the foreman ‘ theoretical ’ 
to have the manganese analyzed in order that its quality 
might be adjusted to its oxidizing value. Thousands of 
dollars were thus wasted and thousands more lost through 
failure of the firm to fulfil its contracts on time, and all of 
it could have been saved at the cost of, say, $10 for a simple 
analysis.” 

Chemistry points out the only proper way to buy sup¬ 
plies which is on the basis of their industrial efficiency by 
means of specifications defining the quality desired and rigid 
tests to make sure that quality is secured. Independent 
estimates by those in exceptional positions to know place 
the efficiency value of supplies as purchased and used by 
American manufacturers at 60 per cent, of what it should 
be. 

Comparatively few American manufacturers light their 
cigars with $20 bills. It is too slow a method of burn¬ 
ing money. They prefer to burn it by shovelfuls, so they 
burn it in the boiler-room. They forget that in ostensibly 
buying coal they are really buying heat and they pay 
good money for slate and sulphur balls with no knowl¬ 
edge of the actual number of British thermal units they 
are receiving for a dollar. Perhaps they depend upon a 
trade name, ignoring the fact that coals from different 
mines in the same district vary greatly as does also coal 
from the same mine. Moreover coal, like some other 


12 




things, is not always true to name. A few years ago 
the Boston School Committee decided to buy its coal 
on specification. It had previously bought “ New River 
coal of the best quality ” and that definition of its desires 
was included in the specification which, however, also in¬ 
cluded a chemical definition of what coal bearing this name 
should be. When deliveries were made by the same dealer 
who had previously supplied school coal they proved to be 
an inferior grade of Pennsylvania coal with sulphur in some 
samples running up to 6 per cent. When the contractor 
was called to account, he admitted that he did not know 
the state in which New River coal originates nor the trans¬ 
portation route by which only it could come to Boston. His 
comment to the committee was, “ I don’t see what you are 
fussing about, it’s the same coal you’ve always had.” 
Later when the temperature in the piles in a certain school 
ran up 90° in one day he was called upon to remove all 
coal delivered by him to schools in that district and sub¬ 
stitute therefor New River coal, which he did at heavy loss 
to himself and corresponding gain to the city. 

Important as are the losses in the initial purchase of 
coal, they are small compared with those which attend its 
burning. Many a mill owner looks out of the window and 
sees, without knowing, his dividends go up the chimney. 
Under well regulated conditions of combustion the flue 
gases should contain not less than 12 per cent, of carbonic 
acid gas. They frequently contain no more than 3 per 
cent. This means that for every ton of coal burned under 
the latter conditions more than 52 tons of excess air are 
heated to the high temperature of the flue gases. Chemis¬ 
try meets these conditions by analyzing the flue gases and 
regulating the draft as indicated by the percentage of car¬ 
bonic acid found. At $2.25 a ton, which is much below 
the average price, the fuel bill of the United States was 
over $1,000,000,000 in 1910. Of that amount chemistry 
could easily have saved $100,000,000. 

Chemistry aids the manufacturer who will listen to her 
teachings in countless other ways. It substitutes a rigid 
control of processes for the guesswork and uncertainty of 


13 


the rule of thumb. It increases the productivity of labor 
by supplying more efficient processes. 

In the sulphur mines of Sicily young boys called carusi 
climb with groans and curses for four hundred feet bear¬ 
ing in a stifling atmosphere 40-pound loads of sulphur ore 
upon their backs. In Louisiana, thanks to Frash, two con¬ 
centric pipes are driven to the ore, a hot solution of cal¬ 
cium chloride is forced through one pipe to melt the sul¬ 
phur which is then pumped to the surface through the 
other, at a trivial fraction of the cost of raising the ore 
in Sicily. 

In the old days of making paper the rags were piled in 
a heap, moistened and allowed to stand for weeks until fer¬ 
mentation had proceeded far enough to soften them. Now 
they are boiled with lime for a few hours. They used to 
be bleached by the slow action of the sun and dew as they 
were spread upon the grass. They are brought to better 
color now over night by bleaching-powder. Cutting tools 
made from high-speed steels multiply the output of the lathe 
and planer. The addition of 1 per cent, of calcium chloride 
to the electrolyzing bath doubles the yield of potassium 
chlorate. 

Chemistry aids the manufacturer by standardizing his 
product and reducing seconds and rejections. It costs just 
as much to tan goat skins into seconds as into firsts though 
seconds bring a third as much. Chemistry even comes to 
the front bearing ammunition during an advertising cam¬ 
paign. You may remember the offer of a blowpipe and a 
bit of charcoal coupled with the information that if your 
paint was a lead paint as the advertiser believed it should 
be you could quickly prove its quality in the laboratory of 
your kitchen by reducing from the paint a little pellet of 
metallic lead. You do not see that advertisement now. 
It disappeared about the time that some one else informed 
the world that zinc paints are “ unalterable even under the 
blowpipe.” 

Nowhere, however, does chemistry render such efficient 
service to the manufacturer as in turning to profit waste 
and nuisance. To this phase of its service we shall return 
again. 


14 


To quote once more Professor Duncan: 

“ During the next five years the small manufacturer 
who is swept out of existence will often wonder why. He 
will ascribe it to the economy of large scale operations, or 
business intrigues or what not, never knowing that his 
disaster was due to the application of pure science that the 
trust organizations and large manufacturers are already 
beginning to appreciate.” 

A few of us have been surprised, and none more than 
the railway managers themselves, by the well supported 
statement before the Interstate Commerce Commission that 
the railroads of the country could save $300,000,000 a 
year by the application of scientific management to the 
operation of their properties. Every chemist who has 
studied the problem is well aware that the entire amount 
in question could be saved through utilization of the proved 
results of chemistry alone. 

Abraham S. Hewitt is authority for the statement that 
the Bessemer process has added $2,000,000,000 yearly to 
the world’s wealth. By far the greatest portion of this in¬ 
crement has come through the economies which this proc¬ 
ess of steel-making has rendered possible in transportation. 

Our own study of car painting practice on 21 electric 
roads has developed the fact that 50 per cent, of the cost 
of materials and labor is wasted and more than 50 per cent, 
of the time spent by the cars in the shops is unnecessary. 

The classic work of Dr. Dudley as the head of the lab¬ 
oratories of the Pennsylvania system has gone far to 
standardize railroad practice throughout the country. Few 
even among railroad men realize how greatly the whole 
community is in his debt. His specifications cover rails, 
soaps, disinfectants, oils for signals and for lubricating, 
paints, steel in special forms for every use, car wheels, 
cement, signal cord and every detail of equipment. He has 
made the transportation of life and property cheaper, safer 
and more expeditious by reason of his application of chem¬ 
istry to the problems of railroad management. 

In a recent address Dr. Frankforter, voicing the opinion 
of every thoughtful chemist, said: “The United States is 
the most wasteful nation in the world; wasteful in living, 


15 


wasteful in manufacturing, and wasteful in conserving its 
natural resources.” So heedless and appalling is this waste 
that the mind trained in chemistry stands aghast. I have 
lately visited a southern lumber mill which burns 1,900 
cords of wood a day in its incinerator. There are two 
hundred such burners in the country limited in destructive¬ 
ness only by the amount of material sent to them, hrom 
such wood chemistry is prepared to extract three gallons 
of turpentine a cord, 10 gallons of ethyl alcohol, or paper 
pulp to the value of $20. We waste each year 500,000,000 
tons of coal and each day a billion feet of natural gas. 
With peat deposits fringing our entire eastern coast we pay 
$4 a ton for coal delivered on the bog. Beehive coke ovens 
flame for miles in Pennsylvania and excite no comment while 
the burning of a $1,000 house would draw a mob. We fill 
the Merrimac River with wool grease making it a stench, 
while the towns along its course buy soap and fertilizer 
and lubricants from Chicago, Chili, and Pennsylvania. We 
burn coal-tar in Massachusetts and import coal-tar colors 
at high prices from Germany. Over the great northwest 
we burn each year 5,000,000 tons of flax straw while we 
pay $40 a ton for imported paper stock from Norway. 
In the South 300,000 tons of paper fiber of the highest 
grade are burned with the cottonseed hulls to which it is 
attached or used with them to adulterate cattle feed. Corn¬ 
stalks to an incalculable tonnage rot or are burned each 
year while chemistry stands ready to convert them into feed 
containing 30 per cent, of sugars on the dry basis, or into 
alcohol for light and power. Waste molasses is sold for 
three cents a gallon or dumped into the stream while alco¬ 
hol sells for forty cents a gallon. Skim milk is fed to hogs 
or thrown away because no one has the enterprise to ex¬ 
tract its casein which is worth more than beefsteak for 
food. 

In the face of such conditions we still meet young men 
who would inform us that the day of opportunity is past. 
The truth is that opportunity is knocking not once but in¬ 
sistently and long at every entrance to the chemist’s 
laboratory. 

Nowhere is the earning power of chemistry better shown 


than in its ability to transform cheap raw materials into 
products of exceptional value. A cord of wood is worth 
perhaps $10 with a dry weight of a little over a ton. Its 
value, therefore, is about a half a cent a pound. In the 
form of chemical fiber for paper-making half the weight 
is lost but the remainder is worth 2 j 4 cents a pound. As 
paper it finds a market at 4 cents. Made into artificial 
silk by more refined chemical processes it commands $2.00 
a pound, while as cellulose acetate bristles it is worth 
$4.00. 

Many of our great industries are founded on minute 
chemical facts. Goodyear drops a bit of gum mixed with 
sulphur on a hot stove and the rubber industry results. The 
fact that silver salts happen to blacken when exposed to 
light is responsible for a corporation with $35,000,000 capi¬ 
tal on which the earnings are over 20 per cent, a year. The 
dipping of cotton yarn in caustic soda while tightly stretched 
has revolutionized the manufacture of the better grades of 
cotton textiles. Because the chemist learns that glycerine 
treated with nitric acid becomes explosive our army en¬ 
gineers are able to separate two continents. Becquerel, 
having placed a bit of uranium upon a photographic plate 
in a black paper wrapper, finds on development that the 
plate has blurred. The observation leads Professor and 
Madame Curie to study similar actions by uranium ores 
and presently the thought of the world is enriched by alto¬ 
gether new conceptions of the constitution of matter, and 
our minds are awed by the magnitude of forces previously 
unrecognized. 

Two classes of securities find a ready sale in Massachu¬ 
setts— 3 3/2 per cent, bonds and gold bricks. It is not an 
easy matter to raise money for a sound chemical proposi¬ 
tion which promises 20 per cent. Much the same condi¬ 
tions undoubtedly prevail throughout the country. Boston, 
which invested largely in sea water gold, the Hickman ma¬ 
chine for converting starch to cane sugar, and the electrical 
process by which spruce wood was transformed into Aus¬ 
tralian wool with the grease in and the burrs attached, is 
just now figuring its losses on synthetic rubber. It left to 
other communities the formula of the Altoona cobbler for 


1 7 


burning ashes, the process for converting water into kero¬ 
sene, and the Lamoine diamonds. Men who turn a box of 
strawberries upside down and require a pastor’s certificate 
of character from the office boy, rush into misapplied chem¬ 
istry with never a thought of expert investigation or ad¬ 
vice. The pity is the greater when one realizes, as every 
chemist does, the generous scale by which are measured 
the rewards of chemistry properly applied and wisely ad¬ 
ministered. Ten years ago a Massachusetts company with 
a capital of $20,000 was organized to conduct a manu¬ 
facture based on chemistry; two years ago it charged off 
$700,000 on real estate and equipment; to-day it has a 
surplus of over $1,000,000. The great Badische Anilin 
und Soda Fabrik, the Elberfeld Co., Brunner, Mond & 
Co., the E. I. duPont de Nemours Powder Co., Meister, 
Lucius & Bruning, the Solvay Process Co., and many others 
well known to every chemist are among the most profit¬ 
able industrial organizations in the world. The one thing 
lacking for an enormous development in this country of 
equally profitable enterprises based on chemistry is a rea¬ 
sonable appreciation by our business men of the earning 
power of chemistry. 

The ordinary investor who may safely trust his own 
judgment in matters involving cotton, wheat, mortgages, 
railroad shares or telephones is not equipped by training 
or experience to decide upon the validity of propositions in¬ 
volving chemistry. He must, if he would avoid disaster, 
rely upon the opinion of disinterested experts. Such opin¬ 
ion should cover the soundness of the chemistry involved, 
the state of the art relating to the manufacture, the patent 
situation, the available market, the nature and extent of 
competition, the supply of raw material, the stage of de¬ 
velopment of the process, the cost of plant and the costs 
of production. These last should be itemized and the 
basis for conclusions regarding every item should be fully 
stated. Large allowances should invariably be made for 
depreciation and in most cases equally liberal allowances 
for contingencies. Secret processes should be left to the 
fool and his money. 

In this environment and on this occasion I cannot for- 

18 


bear making a brief concluding reference to that organi¬ 
zation of chemists which now enjoys your hospitality. At 
Northumberland, Pa., there lies the body of an obscure 
English dissenting clergyman who went through life on a 
salary of £30 a year, although he had enriched the world 
by the discovery of oxygen. It was around the grave of 
Priestley on July 31, 1874, that the idea of the American 
Chemical Society first took form in the minds, and may I 
add the hearts, of a few American chemists met to do 
honor to his memory. Subsequent meetings were held in 
New York at the home of that Nestor among American 
chemists, Prof. Charles F. Chandler, until on April 20, 
1876, the Society was formally organized. From a feeble 
organization of distinctly local character, with only 200 
members in 1887 it has through the service and self-sacrifice 
of a long series of devoted officers become the largest chem¬ 
ical society in the world, with 5,500 members, and is to¬ 
day the most powerful influence in America for the ad¬ 
vancement of chemical science. Its claim upon the loyalty 
and support of every American chemist can no longer be 
denied or set aside. With equal justification it may appeal 
to the whole community for recognition and encourage¬ 
ment. 

There are in the country at least 100,000 doctors and 
nearly 125,000 lawyers. There are only 10,000 chemists 
to carry on a work incomparably more important than liti¬ 
gation and no less beneficial than medicine to the life of 
the community if that life is to be worth living. Some 
measure of the mere material benefits which chemistry can 
offer may be found in the fact that the annual production 
of the chemical industries of the United States is already 
nearly equal in value to our agricultural products. Let 
us, however, not forget that these benefits have come, as 
many more will follow, because chemists have never fal¬ 
tered in pursuing truth for years through the labyrinth of 
difficult researches with no better guide than the slender 
and often broken thread of an hypothesis. Turgot has 
said: “ What I admire in Christopher Columbus is not that 
he discovered the new world but that he went to look for 
it on the faith of an idea.” 


APR 29 19U 


INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 


T he laboratories and staff 

ORGANIZATION of Arthur D. Little, 
Inc., offer exceptional and in some respects 
unique facilities for the efficient study of important 
industrial problems involving extended experimental 
research along chemical and engineering lines. Such 
problems may involve the selection and adaptation 
of raw materials, the better control of processes, the 
elimination of faults in product or the profitable 
utilization of wastes. They present themselves in 
every industry and are for the most part problems 
in Applied Chemistry. As such, they demand for 
their solution carefully focussed and directed research 
by chemical engineers of wide experience. 

The record of this laboratory, established in 
1886, and since that time constantly engaged in 
Industrial Research for clients throughout the 
country, is evidence of the quality of service which 
it offers. 





